


Sand

by perhapsoneday



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst galore, Angsty Sam, BAMF Sam Winchester, Basically Just Sam Being Awesome, But Mostly Sammy, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Sam Winchester, I tried to find my muse again, Limp!Dean, Lots of Angst, Protective Castiel, Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, So here's a revision slash update
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-01-23 21:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1579574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perhapsoneday/pseuds/perhapsoneday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam can't remember how they got here, or how long they've been stranded. He's pretty sure there's something supernatural about this desert, but he's stopped worrying about that, too. He's stopped worrying about pretty much everything at this point that doesn't involve carrying his limp brother's body through the sand, fifty steps at a time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure exactly where this falls in the canon timeline. Sometime before the whole Mark of Cain debacle, at least ... Aw, who am I kidding, I have no idea what the heck this is supposed to be.

_He winces as Dean’s head knocks against his shoulder. It’s a stupid reaction, because he doesn’t have energy to waste being gentle and Dean is too solidly unconscious to feel anything anyways._

One.

_But he can’t help it. He_ wants _to be gentle. It’s his turn to look after Dean, his turn to shoulder the weight. His resolution to take care of Dean is all he has left and anything else feels like failure._

Two.

_So even though it adds to the ache in his muscles, he does his best to hold Dean’s limp form steady as he steps across the shifting sand._

Three.

_God, the sand. How does it_ do _that, sliding beneath his feet like water?_

Four.

_When he looks out -- which he doesn't do anymore, doesn't have the energy -- the sand is flat and still, oppressively and endlessly unchanging. But every time he steps it moves, falls away and gathers up._

Five.

_It’s like walking uphill and downhill at the same time._

Six.

_Or maybe he’s not walking at all._

Seven.

_Maybe he’s not moving forward at all. Just lifting his feet again and again, putting them down in the same place, going nowhere._

Eight.

_Maybe it’s all an illusion of movement, a deception conjured by the desert or his mind or both._

Nine.

_There’s no way for him to really know, nothing he can measure by except the weight of his brother on his back._

Ten.

_And Dean is so still, so silent, but Sam can feel him breathing, can hear his heart keeping time. Dean is alive._

Eleven.

_It’s probably not a good sign that he’s been unconscious for this long, but he’s alive._

Twelve.

_How long has it been, anyways?_ Years, _his body screams,_ years, eternities, _but he knows that’s not true. It can’t have been more than a few days, because he has yet to collapse and die of dehydration._

Thirteen.

_Maybe it’s less than that, maybe it’s only been a few hours, maybe it’s only been a few minutes._

Fourteen.

_Maybe he’s stuck in a loop of seconds that feels like eternity because he doesn't_ remember _when or how they came to this place, this desert._

Fifteen.

_It doesn't even matter. He doesn't care, not anymore. All he care’s about it_ Dean _, Dean’s weight and Dean’s heart beat and Dean’s breath, inhale and exhale, one pair for every step Sam, takes._

Sixteen.

_Dean is alive, and that is the_ only thing _that matters._

Seventeen.

_Sam’s aching muscles don’t matter._

Eighteen.

_Sam’s hunger and exhaustion and thirst -- oh,_ God, _his_ thirst -- _don’t matter. The blood dried on his forehead doesn't matter. The chafing of his skin and the stinging of his eyes don’t matter._

Nineteen.

_The sand in his mouth makes him sick, sick, sick, but he knows he can’t spit it out, can’t scrape it out with his fingers, and he can’t afford to be sick because Dean is all the matters._

Twenty.

_So don’t think about it. Think about Dean. Just about Dean._

Twenty One.

_And if the pain is inescapable, maybe that’s not such a bad thing_

Twenty Two.

_Because even if he doesn’t  -- can’t, shouldn’t, mustn’t -- think about it, Pain is deeply embedded in his understanding of what is Real. Feeling pain makes sense, it’s logical, appropriate._

Twenty Three.

_So he walks._

Twenty Four.

_Because even in this place, where he can’t even trust the ground beneath his feet , there is pain, and there is Dean, and that’s all he needs to keep going._

Twenty Five.

_Halfway. His knees tremble. Dean, Dean, Dean. He has to think about Dean._

Twenty Six.

_When it gets hard like this, when he feels a quiver in the outer shell of his resolve, he allows himself a memory. To keep himself strong. To think of Dean._

Twenty Seven.

_Think of Dean. Remember Dean._

Twenty Eight.

_Sam remembers when he was thirteen years old. He had sand in his mouth then, too._

Twenty Nine.

_At the time, he didn't think anything of it beyond_ blegh, gross. _He was, after all, lying face down in the dirt, and he had more important things to worry about. Things like the train wreck pounding in his head and the frantic way Dean was calling his name._

Thirty.

_"Sammy! C'mon, Sammy, wake up! Ghost didn't hit you_ that _hard."_

Thirty One.

_Oh, right. That was what happened. Stupid ghost. Stupid hunt. Stupid Dean being so stupid loud it was hurting Sam's stupid head._

Thirty Two.

_"Sammy!" Dean called again, shaking Sam's shoulder._

Thirty Three.

_"G'way, Dean," Sam groaned._

Thirty Four.

_"Sammy," Dean sighed in audible relief. "Geez, Sleeping Beauty, couldn't you pick a better place to take a power nap?"_

Thirty Five.

_“No,” Sam grumbled back. “‘S comfy.”_

Thirty Six.

_It wasn’t comfortable at all, but lying still felt a lot better than moving. At least, he thought it probably did; he hadn’t actually_ tried _moving yet._

Thirty Seven.

_Just the thought of opening his eyes made his head swim, so, yeah, he was gonna be staying here a while._

Thirty Eight.

_“Uh huh,” Dean agreed, somehow managing to be condescending, amused, and impatient with just two syllables._

Thirty Nine.

_“Just don’t blame_ me _later when you’re digging grave goop out of your hair with a fork.”_

Forty.

_“What?!” Sam squawked, jerking upright and slamming his eyes open. Dean sniggered, but steadied Sam when he swayed._

Forty One.

_“Gross,” Sam moaned, feeling his vaguely sticky hair_.

Forty Two.

_Ugh._ Stupid hunt. _And stupid Dean was still laughing at him_.

Forty Three.

_Sam leaned towards his brother and spit the grit out of his mouth, missing Dean’s shoes by just a few inches._

Forty Four.

_“Gross!” Dean echoed. “Dude, I don’t care how hungry you are these days, you’re not supposed to_ eat _the grave goop.”_

Forty Five.

_“Jerk.”_

Forty Six.

_“Bitch.” Dean was still grinning as he pulled Sam to his feet, but his smile dimmed when Sam didn’t stop swaying._

Forty Seven.

_“Woah, c’mon. Let’s get out of here. Think you can make it to the car? It’s only like fifty feet, but if you need me to carry you --”_

Forty Eight.

_“No, no,” Sam interrupted hastily. Truthfully, he didn’t feel so great, but there was no way he was providing Dean with more blackmail material._

Forty Nine.

_C’mon,_  suck it up, Winchester. _“Fifty feet. Yeah, I can make it.”_

Fifty.

_He stands in the sand with his brother on his back._

One.


	2. Chapter 2

Castiel has grown a great deal more familiar with the spectrum of emotional possibilities than he ever expected to. It’s not that angels typically don’t experience emotions, but rather that they typically don’t consort with Winchesters to the extent that Castiel has. And no angel knows better than Castiel that to throw your lot in with the Winchesters is to be swept up in their endless hurricane of love, despair, sacrifice, guilt, anger, faith, devotion, defiance … Castiel could spend years naming all the tangled threads that knot together in the glorious catastrophe Winchester. But despite his relatively newfound capacity to identify and understand emotional turbulence, Castiel finds himself alarmingly unequipped to handle this latest emotionally charged Winchester dilemma.

To be fair, it is likely that Samuel does not know how strongly he is projecting his distress, or that he is projecting at all. Most of the time, after all, Sam spends an exhaustive amount of effort to repress, compartmentalize, and lock the darker splinters of himself deep within the recesses of his own mind. Well, Castiel assumes that's what Samuel does. In truth, he has no idea how Sam processes emotions that allows him to maintain a belief in the power of compassion, empathy, and goodness, given how such a doctrine inevitable contradicts with his history and his lifestyle.

In fact, a great deal about current circumstances is forcing Castiel to re-evaluate what he knows about Samuel. Dean, on the other hand, Dean makes sense. Forced to lie limp, helpless, and effectively useless while his brother suffers alone, Dean is living out his worst nightmare just as Castiel would have predicted; for all that Dean is a complex of issues and contradictions that rival even Sam’s, it is no secret that the core of Dean’s identity is hunter and elder brother, and helplessness violates both doctrines. Immobility is a brutally efficient way to torture the man. What Castiel does not understand is why the same tactic is not employed against Samuel. Though younger, Sam is just as much a protector at heart as his brother, and equally, if not more so, terrified of helplessness. But for some reason, Samuel is not afflicted with the same paralysis. There must be something -- something Castiel is missing -- that Samuel finds even more terrifying about wandering a desert than would experience watching, immobile, while his brother slowly dies. And Sam is terrified, Castiel can feel it. He radiates with fear, but also with fierceness, and that indescribable thing that Castiel knows is for Dean. Sam is all at once afraid and unshaken, harder than steel and so humanly soft.

It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make any sense to Castiel. So he watches, hopes to understand, but the pattern just repeats; Samuel just repeats. He walks, fifty slow steps at a time. He never rests. Fifty, fifty, fifty, an endless, unchanging cycle that moves across endless, unchanging sand. There is nothing to mark the passing of distance, or the passing of time, and Castiel would suspect he was witnessing a looping echo if not for the distinctly linear -- although frustratingly haphazard -- progression of Samuel’s thoughts. Samuel is not projecting clearly enough for Castiel to translate the barrage of thoughts into distinct ideas and words -- because that would make this so much easier, which obviously isn’t allowed -- but the emotions behind the thoughts, as well as the occasional flash of imagery, allow Castiel to almost understand.

It is unnecessarily irritating.

Emotions are exceedingly unhelpful. And the Winchesters always make everything ten times more difficult than it should be. Such as, for example, deciding -- against Castiel’s advice -- to go on a “routine hunt” that was going to be “easy as pie” where they “don’t even need any angel power to gank the sonofabitch.” Just a run-of-the-mill spirit who fed on the fear of its victims. Clearly not a match for the infamous Winchester brothers. Sentiments which were clearly contradicted by the prone, dream-locked forms of both the men. Not that this was a particularly unexpected scenario, given Castiel’s experience with Winchester luck. No, the real difficulty started when Castiel’s prompt extermination of the culpable spirit failed to produce any change in the brothers’ condition.

His working theory was that, though now free from the compulsion of spiritual influence, the Winchesters’ subconscious had bought so fully into the nightmare the spirit created for them, they had both fallen back on their instinctual inability to let each other go, and were unconsciously binding each other’s souls within the dreamscape.

Not that Castiel is particularly experienced in the field of dreamscapes, or human sub consciousness, or soul mates, or unhealthily codependent relationships. Still, given what he knew of the brothers, it sounded entirely plausible.

So. Neither would leave while the other remained. Typically, it would not be a difficult matter for Castiel to enter the brothers’ dream directly, where he might be able to rationalize with them. But the absolute conviction with which they believe themselves to be utterly alone makes Castiel fearful of damaging the intergety of their subconscious minds by forcibly intruding. He will have to influence them more indirectly.

Samuel is the most logical avenue of access. His current emotional projection – likely enabled by his history as a psychic – while far too weak to disturb the equilibrium of his environment, give Castiel a clear entry point to his mind, which is also likely to be more susceptible to Castiel’s influence given it’s experience in sharing space, so to speak. In summary, Castiel should be able to send a message into Sam’s subconscious.

Probably best to keep it simple, so as to minimize the chances of misinterpretation, especially given the clearly restricted capacity of Sam’s reasoning within the dream.

The intensity of Sam’s emotions increases as Castiel place’s his hand on the man’s forehead, and it impedes his concentration. He doubts he will ever understand why these particular humans affect him so.

_It's not real. You're both trapped in a dream. If you let Dean go, you can both get out. You don't have to be afraid. Let me help you._

How complicated his world has become.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, Dean tends to swear when he gets stressed. And he's gonna get really stressed..

_Goddammit, Sam._

Okay, so,  _technically_ , Dean can't exactly say that this colossal fuck-up is really Sam's fault. But ... but ...  _God damn it all to Hell._

Dean wants to scream -- maybe more of a manly yell -- and he really,  _really_  wants to punch something. He would settle for blinking, though. Yeah, blinking would be nice. He doesn't have any sand in his eyes --  _yet_  -- because Sam is always so careful, so fucking  _gentle_  with him, keeps his head pointed up off the sand. But Dean thinks he would rather have eyes full of crud than have to. Keep. Watching.

Sam’s supposed the smart one. And he is, he’s got this great big ol’ college  brain that knows the craziest things. But sometimes Sam can be so incredibly  _stupid_  it drives Dean mad, makes him want to wrestle the brat to the ground and hold him there until he stops being so thick headed, like he used to do when they were kids, or at the very least, smack the kid up the side of his head and call him a dumbass. That might sound a little harsh, but really, what kind of marine-trained, college educated, war-hardened professional hunter decides that it is a good idea to  _carry_  his seemingly comatose older brother across an unknown supernatural desert without any weapons or supplies? And okay, maybe Sam doesn't have any control over where they are or what they have, but he’s the only with the ability to move his limbs and maybe do something  _useful_ , and instead, he’s wasting time and running himself into the ground. And he’s making Dean watch.

Dean gets that Sam doesn't have a whole lot options, and the few he does have all suck. He gets that they don’t know what they’re up against, that he probably isn’t the only one who can’t remember what happened or how they got here or where  _here_  even is. And Sam is probably exhausted and dehydrated and half dead of heat stroke and  _panicking_  -- God knows Dean is, and all he’s doing is lying here -- and that none of those things are helpful in making good decisions. But even though all that’s true, and even though he can’t say how long they've been here, Dean’s pretty sure it’s been long enough for rational thought to kick back in. And what does Sam do?

He. Doesn’t. Stop.

Dean just wants him to stop. He  _needs_  Sam to stop, to realize that the only way he’s gonna do  _any_  of them any good is to get himself out. Go find water, go find help, go find whatever supernatural asshole brought them here and gank it and then get himself the fuck out. He can come back for Dean whenever he’s figured this shit out -- Hell yeah, he  _better_  -- but if he can’t, if Dean dies while Sam goes on, at least one of them will make it. Dean can live with that.

He can’t watch Sam die. He can’t, he  _can’t_. _Don’t make me, Sammy, stop this, stop, stop, stop._  But no matter how hard he tries, Dean just can’t _move_ , can’t do anything but feel the steady tread of Sam’s feet beneath him, stare unblinking into the flesh of Sam’s neck brushed with Sam’s hair and soaked with Sam’s sweat.

Dean finds himself counting Sam’s breath,  _inhale_ ,  _exhale_ , one pair for every step Sam takes, or maybe it’s one step for every pair. Maybe Sam is using his breathing to keep pace, a mental tool to help him keep walking. Or maybe Sam has to remind himself to breathe, maybe he thinks that if he stops walking it won’t matter if he stops breathing, too, and that thought is just so fucking  _wrong_  Dean wants to cover it in salt, burn it, and bury it where the sun don’t shine. Instead he listens, he feels Sam breathing. Because he can’t do anything else, he counts Sam’s breath, counts up, and that’s important, he counts  _up_ , never down. Except it  _feels_  like he’s counting down at the same time, because he knows Sam, knows that he’s taking fifty steps at a time, fifty breaths. And that’s not a deadline, it’s  _not_ , it’s just Sam’s damned OCD behaviour, but it’s still _there_.

It’s like after The Great Wall of Sam fell. Dean remembers what Sam said, huddled in the corner of a motel bathroom, wrapping and unwrapping the bandage on his hand, about how the cage was a place for sixes, everything came in sixes. That was all that Sam said, but Dean heard the rest of it. _The Cage is a place for sixes, Dean, and if I can do things in fives it might mean I’m safe_. That meant five times making the bed, fifty bites of every meal, and five hundred miles between jobs.

If Sam is using his fives again, then things are really screwed up, not that Dean didn’t already know that. But,  _fuck_ , he can’t even  _do_  anything about it.

And then,  _forty-nine, fifty_ , Sam stops – doesn’t stop, really just pauses, but Dean knows the difference, knows what it means. So he starts screaming in his head again, because this is it, if Sam is going to walk away, this is his only chance to do it, and if he’s going to drop dead right next to Dean, it’s going to happen now. So Dean screams in his head and strains to hear the sound of his brother’s breathing, waits to be dropped on the sand, waits for anything, anything to change.

Instead, he feels his body rise and fall with the rhythm of a slow footstep. And he knows that forty nine more will follow.

_Goddammit, Sammy._

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of 10/11/2015, there have been some revisions to the previous two chapters, and everything from here on out is a complete rewrite.

_Something feels different._

One.

_Nothing has changed. The sand is the same, the heat, the thirst, the ache_.

Two.

_The pressure and sway of his brother’s body. The rhythm of his breathing_.

Three.

_But something feels different. In his head. His thoughts have grown oily, smoky. And there’s a pressure where there wasn’t one before_.

Five.

_His ankles shake as they slide with the sand. It’s like walking across the back of a snake._

Six.

_The sense of_ wrong _grows and whispers, just out of reach. There’s something_ wrong, _with this place, with his head, with his brother._

Six.

_They can’t get out. They need to get out. He has to get Dean out._

Six.

_It’s not real. It can’t be real. He’s in a desert, carrying his brother on his back, fifty steps at a time._

Six.

_It’s madness. It’s_ his _madness. It’s caught up to him, swallowed him whole, and taken his brother with him._

Six.

_Madness. To walk across a desert. To carry his brother. To think that he_ could. _All this time, he was afraid of the wrong thing, just like he always is. It’s not the desert, not sand or the sun. If there even is a desert._

Six.

_It’s him. It’s_ always _him. Everything is wrong. He’s doing everything wrong._

Six. Six.

_He doesn’t have to be afraid of the desert_.

Six. Six. Six.

_He doesn’t have to be afraid of what will happen to Dean. He doesn’t have to be afraid of what will happen to him. Stupid._

Six. Six. Six.

He’s _the one doing it all wrong, making it all wrong, it’s his fault. Oh god, what’s he doing to Dean, what has he been doing to Dean? He’s always known his brother was better off as far away from him as possible. He knows that, but all he ever seems to do is cling._

Six. Six. Six.

_He needs to let go. Lord knows he’s tried. Again and again and again. Too many excuses. Too much weakness._

Six. Six. Six.

_So weak, in the way his knees buckle against the sand. Dean slides, slides onto the sand, falls, just like Sam always lets him down, drops, onto the cold, hard, ground, onto the black, his face in the grave, in the pit, and it’s dark inside and out, and he’s alone, Dean is gone, calling his name somewhere far away, away from the nightmare, such a nightmare, maybe if he closes his eyes, he can wake up._


End file.
